Newly released video of a suspect in a spree of arsons at homes in a New York City neighborhood populated by Bukharian Jews shows the man walking laboriously down the street, then pulling what appears to be a gun out of the ankle of his pants.
The video captured near the scene of the first suspicious fire in Forest Hills on Nov. 8 shows the suspect walking with what appears to be a limp before kneeling down behind a building and pulling the gun out of his pants. He moves the item to his front pocket.
The video is the latest sign of the suspect who police say has torched at least six buildings in the tight-knit community in eastern Queens. Four of the fires hit homes that were still under construction, including one house that was burned twice.
The arsonist's motive is still a mystery. One theory is that he is targeting opulent, oversized homes that have been replacing the neighborhood's modest dwellings. Another holds that the person behind the fires is just disturbed.
At one fire scene, someone left behind an encrypted note apparently intended to throw off investigators.
Police say they don't have evidence suggesting that the arsons are hate crimes, but the fact that most of the victims have been Bukharian Jews, a group that fled persecution in Central Asia, has the neighborhood on edge.
A video released Tuesday evening shows a person of interest walking east on 69th Road in the area of 112th Street and Grand Central Parkway on Dec. 6, just before one of the fires broke out on the street. The man quickly glances behind him, then continues on his way.
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No one has so far been injured in the fires. In addition to the six buildings that were heavily burned, seven others nearby sustained damage from spreading flames.
Bukharian Jews immigrated to New York in the 1980s from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and throughout Central Asia.
Many have done well. Behind fortress-like fences, luxury cars are parked in the driveways of rebuilt multistory homes that replaced smaller Tudor-style homes.
The community has raised $50,000 in award money for information leading to an arrest, and city officials have offered an additional $12,000.
Other surveillance footage from a neighbor's home shows a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt walking through the ashes of a torched house on Nov. 25. Investigators discovered a strange note atop a nearby car. It contained six rows of five letters and 18 rows of two numbers, along with the following instruction: "Decode this message to find the person who caused the fire."
A detective and FBI agent both decrypted the puzzle and came up with the name of a store owner, whom police questioned and ruled out as a suspect. A second person captured on security video at one of the fires has similarly been ruled out.
Robert Boyce, the NYPD's chief of detectives, said investigators have some physical evidence but "nothing that would lead us to a single person."
Boyce said fire marshals and investigators from the department's arson and explosion squad, as well as the major case unit, believe the suspect likely lives nearby. But unlike other pattern arsonists, this one uses only materials found at the scene, not accelerants, he said.
Anyone with information on the arsonist is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.
